Last Super Bowl? Block the Lockout
If you are a football fan, savor Sunday’s Super Bowl, because when the Packers and Steelers leave the field that may be the last game in a long time. The National Football League (NFL) owners say they will lock out the players next season unless they agree to outrageous givebacks.
Even if you are not a football fan, you should be concerned because a lockout won’t only impact football players and fans. Stadium employees will be jobless. Sports bars, police officers who provide stadium security, restaurants, hotels and others who work supporting the game also will be hurt. In fact, 4.8 million workers will feel the impact, and $4.5 billion in revenue will disappear from 32 cities around the nation.
The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) recently tried to get a clear message out to fans in a TV commercial that simply says to the owners, “Don’t lock us out. Let us play.” But CBS is refusing to air the ad. Click here to watch the ad.
You can help the players get their message out by signing our “Block the Lockout” Petition. Click here to sign the petition. You also can sign the Twitter petition here or by tweeting: petition @NFL: I demand a #SuperBowl in 2012! DO NOT lock out football players next season, #LetThemPlay. http://act.ly/31w
CBS Refuses to Air NFL Players Ad
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Are you kidding, CBS? The network has rejected the “Let Us Play” ad (left) from the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) that was to air Feb. 5 on the CBS College Sports Network during the NFLPA college all-stars game.
CBS executives said they “didn’t want to get involved” in the labor negotiations between the players and the NFL owners, according to AdAge.com.
Not get involved? Come on. CBS is big-dollars involved already.
Actors with Disabilities All but Invisible on TV
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About one in eight Americans is disabled, but you wouldn’t know it from watching TV. In the new fall TV season, only six characters out of 587, about 1 percent, will have a disability. Even more amazing is that only one of those actors has a disability in real life.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and a new report shows persons with disabilities are all but invisible on the nation’s five broadcast networks— ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC. That also means there are few opportunities for actors with disabilities to be cast.
The report, “Where We Are On TV,” by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also found that of the six disabled characters, all are white and five are male. Yet 51 percent of all disabled people are women and only 18 percent are white. Robert David Hall, who plays Dr. Albert Robbins on the CBS show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and has a prosthetic leg, is the only real-life disabled person cast in a regular role in a series. The other five are all actors portraying disabled people. You can download the report here.
‘Undercover Boss’: A Fairy Tale That Ignores Grim Reality
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As kids, we all loved the sugar-coated fairy tales of handsome and brave princes rescuing beautiful princesses from despotic kings.
The new CBS “reality” show “Undercover Boss” that debuted last night after the Super Bowl is a 21st century sugar-coated fairy tale. But this time, the brave prince is actually a CEO who goes undercover as a regular worker near the bottom of the food chain. There he finds how hard and dirty the job is; how stifling and draconian the company’s workplace rules are; and how crappy the pay is.
Then after walking so many miles in an employee’s work boots, the boss sees the light and promotes workers, raises pay, eases rules and promises a new found respect for all workers.
(If your boss isn’t going undercover anytime soon, be sure to check out American Rights at Work’s new website, Fix Our Jobs, where you can vent about how lousy—and even how great—your job is and learn how to make it better. Click here to watch the video.)
